//------------------------------// // Ch. 5: Crawl Before You Run // Story: Nightingale, Neither Snow Nor Hail // by TundraStanza //------------------------------// Little Crystal grunted and groaned. His horn glowed a little before it dimmed. This happened a few more times. The colt was so close. He was sure about it. "Neah!" He cried out. The horn glowed teal with no interruption. Nightingale clapped her hooves. "You did it!" "Oh, wow!" Mama smiled. "That's great." "You cast your first spell, little guy!" Baba lifted his son and cheered. Crystal giggled and waved his hooves around. --- He woke up in the middle of the night. He knew his sitters were staying longer than usual, but he didn't know why. Where were his mommy and daddy? He squirmed around in his bed, but he couldn't get to sleep. He stayed still for a bit, staring at the ceiling. Something shuffled to the side. He glanced and noticed his big sister was moving quietly along the floor. That was weird. Where was she going? As soon as she was out of the bedroom, he moved to descend to the floor. He followed her all the way out of the house. When he saw her gallop into the deep forest, he skidded to a halt. His parents never said much about this place, other than not to go in. He looked at the figure of his sister getting smaller and smaller. He took a deep breath, lit up his horn and trotted along the entrance path. There were too many little noises. Something was growling. Another thing was rustling. Several objects cracked loud enough for him to think they were right on top of him. Still, he tried to keep his eyes on the distant feathers of his sister's wings. A wall of fire emerged and blocked his view. He scrambled backward and backed into a tree. The sudden impact convinced him to jump and turn around. It kind of looked like his daddy's special keepsake. Why was that here? Crystal heard a scream that sounded like Nightingale's. He lit his horn up to the point of igniting it. A flash of green flames struck the trunk of the tree at a diagonal. It tipped over away from him, leaving his daddy's sword to fall to the wayside. Crystal grabbed the handle in his mouth and ran toward the wall of fire. "Now, now... didn't your mother ever teach you not to run with knives?" He gasped at the sudden voice. Several dark vines lashed out and ensnared his legs. They tugged in four different directions. He had to cry out in pain, dropping Daddy's sword in the process. A giant fly-trap with eerie yellow and red eyes appeared, laughing at its prey. "You poor excuse for a changeling." It opened its maw wide. "If your parents and your sister couldn't touch me, what made you think you were ever in control?" Crystal's eyes bulged. "AHHHHHH!" Then, his world faded away. --- ??? Crystal sat up and gasped for breath. He held a hoof against his head while trying to calm down. Although, was it a hoof? He didn't think any horse or goat had a leg quite like his, yet the word seemed to fit. He shook his head. He tried to recall his dream. He was sure it had felt so real. The details, however, were slipping away. He sighed and looked around. He was still trapped between mattress walls, a bulletproof window, and a dirt floor. He paused when he couldn't immediately spot his temporary roommate. There was another occupant over in the corner. Was that her? He tried to walk closer, but stumbled after the first step. After picking himself up, he could feel that his comfortable stance had turned quadruped. Looking back, he saw that his legs had gone through a similar change as his arms. He even had a tail that looked as torn up as his limbs. A bit slower this time, he stepped with each hoof. Briefly, he looked at the piles of clothes where he and Nightingale had rested. Then, his curiosity about the other presence drove him to keep waddling along. As he got closer, he could hear chewing noises. He remembered that there was a pile of hay left at one end of the cell. The first thing he noticed was the occasional wag of a gray tail. A faded blue wing hung low on either side of the pony. Her mane was short and spiked. She didn't appear to notice as he crawled within an arm's length. Or was that a front leg's length now? He tapped a hoof against her shoulder. "Night?" The pegasus jumped back, whinnied, then spit out a few stray pieces of hay. Her wings spread out as she wildly looked left and right. She looked down at her front hooves. Her jaw dropped as her ears shook. She turned around and looked in shock at Crystal. When she blinked, her big green eyes turned into the same solid blue plates as Crystal's. Then, they changed back when she blinked again. "C-Crystal? W-What happened to you? What happened to me?" Nightingale sat down and held her front hooves against the sides of her face. "Sweet Celestia, I can't even!" Crystal stomped the dirt in front of himself. "Night, calm your tits! We've already established that panicking won't help us." "I..." She exhaled loudly. "You're right. Sorry, I just... I wasn't ready to wake up to my body grazing without me." "You did seem to be in a kind of trance." He nodded. "Other than scared, are you feeling okay?" She pressed her hooves together just under her muzzle. "I think so. The last part of my dream before waking up fully sounded like a whisper, telling me that I was an animal that should eat like one." She shook her head. "I think it's gone now." "Let's hope so." He chuckled. "I'd hate to have to explain to a farmer why my sister was sleepwalking, and how she managed to devour his entire crop." "Can we still really think of each other as siblings?" She looked him over. "I mean, you're a unicorn-changeling and I'm a pegasus." He tilted his head. "Unicorn-changeling?" She looked down and scratched her head. "That's strange. Why did I say that?" "Hmm, I kind of like that descriptor." He rubbed his chin. "Mind if I steal it?" He waved his hoof dismissively. "But yes, I still see someone I can call a sister when I look at you." She nodded. Her eyes blinked blue. "Yeah, you're my brother. That feels right to say." He smiled. "About half the time, you've got the same eyes as I do." She chuckled. "It wasn't exactly how I expected this change to translate my heterochromia, er... two-colored eyes." His eyes moved as if to raise a brow. "You had expectations regarding a transformation that defies bodily science?" "I know. It sounds dumb when I say it out loud." Her wings shrugged to either side. "Seriously, where are we?" "No idea." He walked over and held a hoof up against the glass wall. "Considering that darkness outside this room hasn't lit up at all, I'd guess either underground or inside a mountain." She looked up and down at the space beyond the fancy cage. "I hope Mom is okay." "Wasn't she basically lying to you about why she was still home at the time?" He glanced at her. She stared in shock at him. "How could you possibly know that?" "Well, you were huffing, fuming, and deadpanning at her while she was in the car." He flipped what counted as his wrist for emphasis. "It gave off the impression that she wasn't being upfront about her reason." She blinked twice. "I... wow. You're good." She cleared her throat. "But still, I don't want harm to come to her for that. I'm sure she was just worried about me. That's what mothers do. Right?" "I wouldn't know." He looked outside. "Aside from my existence, I don't have any evidence that I had a mother. She was gone by the time I was old enough to be aware of my surroundings." "Oh, crud." Her eyes went wide. "I'm so sorry." "Don't be." He shook his head. "You want any more of that hay? There's nothing else to eat in here." "I think I filled up enough while I was half-asleep." She chuckled nervously. "What about you? I know you don't feel hunger anymore, but..." He idly patted his abdomen. "Well, I haven't lost any skin off my bones... or my exoskeleton from my squishy insides? I don't know." He smiled, showing off his fangs. "Tell you what: If I start looking like a pale, thin beast, I give you permission to force-feed me. Deal?" "I really hope it doesn't come to that, but alright." She held up a hoof, but then faltered when she remembered neither of them had hands. He took it in stride, reaching up his own hoof to tap hers. "Then, it's settled." --- ??? Relative silence in the cell and anything nearby drove the inmates to find things to do. After Nightingale tried and failed to put on her shirt, the two decided to just leave the clothes where they were. Crystal put on his best intimidation face at the window. After a bit of prodding, he convinced Nightingale to try it out too. When she managed to successfully hiss with a forked tongue, they both gasped. She shook her head, and her features seemed to return to their normal pony proportions. A few minutes of silence passed where they sat against the back mattress wall. Once Nightingale was ready to speak again, she sang a few verses of songs she knew. Crystal listened intently. He smiled calmly and bobbed his head to her rhythm. At one point, her wings were waving around like an orchestra's conductor. *Thunk!* The ears of pegasus and unicorn-changeling swiveled. The owners' eyes gradually followed suit. In the middle of the dirt, the ventilation cover was resting. Both captives looked up. A pair of orange bulbs lit up the dark space. Nightingale moved to cover Crystal, glaring in warning at the potential intruder. A voice echoed in the air vent. "Oh, nice! More changelings!" Nightingale blinked twice. "Wait, what?" Something buzzed as a yellow creature with an orange beetle for a back hovered down. Was it another pony? The size looked right, but it looked like someone had recently polished it. Well, there was a bit of dust covering its legs. Maybe that had come from moving through the ventilation. Crystal gulped. "Who... What are you supposed to be?" "If the past twenty-five years meant anything, I'm supposed to be human." The newcomer shrugged. "But I guess magic curses or whatever decided I'm really a changeling. Name's Krusty." "Um... I'm Nightingale." She pointed a hoof at herself and then at her brother. "This is Crystal Ward." She shook her head and held up her front hooves. "Wait, hold up! I thought changelings were dark and had holes in their hooves. Why do you look so... illuminated?" "How about we get out of this crummy place first?" He lifted himself toward the vent with his rapidly moving wings. "I'll tell you all about it once you're free." "Up there?" She looked at the vent. "Yeah!" Krusty held his hooves out. "You've got a good pair of wings on you and he can just shape-shift some for a bit. Easy-peasy!" "Shape-shift?" Crystal looked incredulous. "I can't shape-shift." "And I just got these wings recently. I don't know if I can-" Movement from Nightingale's wings and the floor slowly getting further away stopped her train of thought. "Oh." "Can't shape-shift? The name of our whole game is 'changeling'." Krusty moved his hoof as if to face-palm. He lowered himself to the dirt on all fours. "Alright, I'll give you a freebie this time. Pay attention." Before either of the siblings could respond, Krusty surrounded himself with a column of blue fire. One instant, he was a shiny changeling. The next, there was a small giraffe standing there. Its head was just below the open vent. Nightingale and Crystal gawked at what they had just witnessed. Luckily, she threw up her hooves in surprise and stopped her from colliding her head with the ceiling. "Climb on up, little guy!" Krusty's voice called from the giraffe's mouth. "My girlfriend's keeping the guards busy. We shouldn't keep her waiting." Crystal inhaled deeply before he sighed. "Yeah, okay." He crawled up the long neck of the giraffe. He got a hold of the edge inside the vent. He scrambled to pull himself up, but slipped back a bit. Nightingale flew over and gave him a last push. She then crawled in after him. In a second flash of blue flame, Krusty returned to his yellow changeling self and flew into the vent to lead the way. --- ??? hours; somewhere in the Grand Canyon, Arizona... Several popping sounds echoed amidst the multi-layered rock. Perhaps the cover of night was making the noise louder than it actually was. A few jets of flame appeared every so often. Closer inspection near the bottom would reveal an army of identical pale men in business attire, sunglasses, and allegedly painted-on faces. They believed they were detaining an intruder of the scaled variety. One of the clones got melted by a jet of fire. The remains of his body basically evaporated before another man stepped in to fill the empty space. Another stream of fire severely damaged a cluster of pale men on the opposite side of the intruder. They followed the example of their melted brethren and disintegrated. The intruder, for her part, was having loads of fun. She was jumping around, spin-kicking some identical losers and spitting fire on the rest. She even managed to snag one of the pairs of sunglasses in her claws. The remaining pale men kept insisting that her resistance was futile. She just laughed and vaporized some more with her fire. On her person were a belt and a wristwatch. This watch beeped a couple times right as she was using one clone to bowl over seven others. She glanced down at her wrist device before groaning. She wasn't done having fun yet. But, she figured the plan could go south if she didn't respond in kind. So, the scaled intruder pulled out an oval-shaped item from her belt. She grinned, closed her eyes, and threw the item on the ground. A bright flash erupted and a severe ringing tore through the pale men's number. Their bodies vibrated erratically and they all stood in postures that looked uncomfortable. She flew out of the canyon. A few seconds later, a gorilla climbed after her. On this gorilla's shoulders, two little creatures were holding on for dear life. Nobody said anything until they were at least a mile away from the cliff. At that point, the intruders and their rescued companions were standing next to a decorated van. The gorilla set his two passengers inside this van. It then erupted in a column of blue fire and exited as a yellow changeling. Krusty crawled inside the van. His partner hopped in after him and shut the door. "Let's go, Simon!" Krusty called. The very human driver shifted gears on his vehicle before speeding away. Nightingale and Crystal lied down and breathed heavily. "What's the matter with you, kids?" joked the young dragon. "How... did it... get so... hot?" Nightingale panted. The distraction scoffed. "It's pretty normal for around here." Krusty hugged the dragon. "This here is my special someone, Smolder." "Since when did I belong to you, KC?" Smolder crossed her arms. "Ah, right." He rolled his eyes. "I meant I'm her boyfriend." "And don't you forget it." Smolder kissed Krusty on the forehead. Crystal was still catching his breath. "Thank you for... saving us..." "Don't mention it." Krusty smiled. "Go ahead and rest up. We'll have time to chat tomorrow." Nightingale and Crystal barely managed to voice affirmation. Within seconds, the two were fast asleep to the rhythmic engine running and the long road. ---